The thing is, yes she is medicating for depression.
Hrg, sorry. Should have clarified with an "and sometimes even if they are." Mi madre, for example, has been on antidepressants for... something like fifteen, twenty years, I think, probably more by now, and if she goes off them the symptoms still come back, despite pretty much everything having improved since then, tremendously on many levels. And even on them it's not terribly difficult for her to fall back in to a depressive cycle. It's sometimes not really the most rational of afflictions, unfortunately.
... but yeah, seeing ways that would help to improve the situation, at least, and not being able to attain them is
incredibly frustrating. As a person in a family with an almost ubiquitous history of depression, all I can say is I sympathize pretty sincerely. It's also, unfortunately, something that's pretty much guaranteed to happen if you're working with someone with long-term depression... probably repeatedly.
It's a vaguely damning (because gods
fuck if it weren't so) thing to have repeated, but it's a mantra you just kinda' have to have when you're dealing with someone living with depression -- you're going to have things like this happen, and a lot of the time all you can really
do is... be there, at best. And it's hard to emphasize how much being there helps, even if it doesn't seem like it in the short run. Be there, help how you can, wait for the next opportunity to help, even if this one is unobtainable. It can be a hard path, and a long one. Sometimes one without an end. But... your loved ones are worth it, yeah? Seems to be the thing you have to keep in mind, especially during the bad patches.